Jean, Josaphat (birth name: François-Joseph-Victorien) [Йосафат
(Франсуа-Жозеф-Вікторіен) Жан] – French-Canadian priest of the Ukrainian
Graeco-Catholic Church (UGCC), religious, missionary, active in political and
community affairs; born on 19 March 1885 in Saint-Fabien, Quebec, Canada; died
on 8 June 1972 in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada; buried in the Sts. Peter and Paul
Ukrainian Catholic Church Cemetery in Mundare, Alberta.

After completing his theological studies at the Major Seminary of
Montreal, in August 1910 Jean was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. In
the following month he travelled to Galicia where he studied the
Ukrainian language and church rite in a Basilian monastery in Krekhiv.
In 1911 he changed to the Byzantine rite of the UGCC. He subsequently
returned to Canada, via England, and from the autumn of 1912 was the
director of a Ukrainian missionary school in Sifton, Manitoba. After
deciding to join the Basilian Order, in the autumn of 1913 he travelled
again to Krekhiv where he entered the novitiate. Six months later he
received the Basilian habit and took the monastic name of Josaphat.
Unable to return to Canada owing to the outbreak of the First World War,
in August 1914 he moved to a monastery in Lavriv (Staryi Sambir raion,
Lviv oblast), where he served as a priest in at least seven parishes.
After returning to Krekhiv, in March 1917 he was transferred to Zhovkva
where he served for a year as an assistant priest. In the second half of
1918 he was temporary director of a Basilian boarding school for boys in
Buchach, and subsequently became librarian in the Buchach monastery.

In 1919-1920 the Rev. Josaphat Jean worked as a translator,
interpreter and secretary for the governments of the
Western Ukrainian
People’s Republic (ZUNR) and the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) in
Galicia, Kamianets-Podilskyi and Warsaw. In 1919 he also became a
military chaplain of the Ukrainian Galician Army and chief secretary of
the Ukrainian Red Cross branch in Warsaw. From August 1920 to April 1923
he worked for the ZUNR government in exile in Vienna. Along with other
ZUNR representatives he took part in various international conferences
and meetings lobbying for the rights of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia.
In February 1921 he travelled to London with the ZUNR minister of
foreign affairs for meetings with British politicians and Canadian
diplomats, and a year later held meetings in London with British church
officials and politicians. He also came to London in 1923.

In August 1923, at the request of Metropolitan
Andrei Sheptytskyi,
Jean moved to Bosnia with the object of re-opening an abandoned
monastery of the Ukrainian Studite monks in Kamenica (having joined the
Studite Order himself). At the beginning of November 1923 he was also
appointed parish priest for Ukrainian
Graeco-Catholics in the settlements
of Kamenica and Dubrava Stara and Dubrava Nova. Early in 1925 he was
compelled to leave Bosnia because the local authorities were obstructing
the Studite monastery’s continued existence. For a short time he served
as parish priest in the village of Sibinj in Slavonia, Croatia, then in
March 1925 he returned, via England, to Canada, tasked with establishing
a Studite monastery there, as well as a colony of Ukrainian settlers. On
an area of land (almost 650 sq. km) in the county of Abitibi, reserved
by the government of Quebec, he founded a settlement (then called Sheptytske, later re-named
Lac-Castagnier) for Ukrainian immigrants from Galicia. In 1931 he re-joined the Basilian Order. Between 1932
and 1940 he was an assistant priest at the UGCC church of St. Michael in
Montreal and served a number of other congregations in the parish. He
then became parish priest of St. Michael’s church in Montreal (1940-42)
and the UGCC parish in Ottawa (1942-45).

In January 1946, at the request of the UGCC bishops and the Basilian
Order in Canada, the Rev. Jean came to Europe to assist in efforts to
re-settle post-war Ukrainian displaced persons. At first he had several
meetings in London, where the issue of displaced persons was being
discussed at the first session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Subsequently he was based mainly in Paris. In February 1947 he was
appointed parish priest for London by Bishop Ivan Buchko, the
apostolic visitor for Ukrainian Graeco-Catholics in Western Europe, by
agreement with the Basilian Order, and arrived in the capital on 1
March. In mid-1947, by which time there were about 10 UGCC priests in
the country, he was appointed dean of the UGCC Mission in Great Britain.
In March 1947 he identified an unused church building in Saffron Hill,
London, which, with the assistance of Cardinal Bernard Griffin, head of
the Roman Catholic Church of England and Wales, was purchased for the
UGCC (becoming the first church to be owned by the
Ukrainian Catholic Church in Great
Britain). He was personally involved in the renovation of the building
and the establishment at the church of a parish office and accommodation
for priests. In addition to his pastoral duties, he co-operated with
the Central Ukrainian Relief Bureau in London and the
Association of
Ukrainians in Great Britain in providing assistance to the large numbers
of Ukrainians arriving in the UK from 1947. At the request of Bishop
Buchko he also visited the Apostolic Nuncio in Dublin, Republic of
Ireland, and the primate of the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland in
Armagh, Northern Ireland, to seek help in obtaining grants to enable
Ukrainian students from the UK to study in Ireland. He was first deputy
head of the Relief Board for Ukrainian Students in Great Britain (KoDUS), founded in 1948.

In August 1949 Jean was instructed by the Basilian Order to return to
Canada. He served as an assistant priest in Edmonton and Mundare
(1950-58) and in Vancouver (1958-61). In 1957 he became Honorary
Director of the Basilian Order’s museum in Mundare, founded largely on
the basis of collections of antiquarian Ukrainian books and other
objects which he had assembled in the course of his life. In the same
year he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the
Ukrainian Free
University in Munich. He spent the final years of his life in the
Basilian monastery in Grimsby, Ontario. At the end of 1963 the Father
Josaphat Jean Foundation was founded, with the aim of awarding grants to
students of Ukrainian descent in Montreal.